No. 2799

Potatoes, Mellow

Pommes de Terre Fondantes

Prepare a few dozen small potatoes, giving them the shape of a pigeon's egg, all of uniform size; lay them in a sautoir with melted veal kidney fat, or good lard, and cook slowly while turning so that they color on all their surfaces; when done, press down slightly with a palette so as to flatten without breaking; they should now be oval-shaped. Pour off the fat from the pan and cover with butter; put in the potatoes, one beside the other, and keep them in the oven from ten to twelve minutes, to have them absorb the largest part of the butter while turning and basting; salt over and dress in a vegetable dish.

Another way is to prepare by first boiling olive-shaped potatoes, then crushing them one after the other in a cloth; place on a buttered baking sheet, pour slightly melted fresh butter over and color in a hot oven, basting at frequent intervals with the butter while cooking; dress in a vegetable dish.

← No. 2798 Potatoes, Mashed, in Snow, in Puree or Baked Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2800 Potatoes, Pont-Neuf →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same idea: potatoes cooked gently in fat, flattened, then finished in butter until they are saturated with it. The word fondantes is a promise about texture, and it depends entirely on the butter stage being slow and generous.

The hinge is the butter, not the fatThe first cooking in lard or suet only colors and cooks the potatoes through. The point of the oven stage is absorption, so use far more butter than seems reasonable, keep the pan crowded so the potatoes sit in it, and baste. If the butter browns hard or smokes, the potatoes toughen instead of turning silky.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, wide and shallow. Any heavy skillet that holds the potatoes in a single layer works.
Veal kidney fatRendered suet from around the kidney, valued for its clean flavor. The recipe itself offers good lard as the alternative; clarified butter or duck fat will also do the job, with their own flavor. Ordinary vegetable oil will color the potatoes but adds nothing.
Pigeon's egg and olive shapesBoth mean potatoes trimmed by hand to a uniform tapered oval, on the order of 1 1/2 in. long, with the olive shape usually the smaller of the two. Small waxy potatoes such as new potatoes need only light trimming. Uniformity matters more than beauty, since mixed sizes will not finish together.
PaletteA palette knife, that is, an offset or flat metal spatula. Press once, lightly and evenly, only enough to flatten the potato to an oval, as the recipe directs; press harder and it breaks apart.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is essentially the French professional repertoire of the period written out for an American kitchen with a large brigade. Fondant means melting, and the name describes the mouthfeel rather than any place or person; the same technique survives in restaurant kitchens as fondant potatoes, though today they are usually cooked in stock and butter rather than started in rendered suet. The two methods given here show how fluid such names were: one is a turned, flattened, butter-basted potato, the other is what a modern menu would call smashed potatoes. The use of veal kidney fat is a reminder that a nineteenth-century professional kitchen butchered whole animals and had a hierarchy of rendered fats on hand, each with its own accepted use.